The performance of a communications channel tends to vary based on various characteristics of the channel, which may depend on the communication medium over which the signal is transmitted. For the example of an electrically conductive channel, fundamental effects that can adversely affect performance include skin effect and dielectric losses. For a wireless channel, effects of the environment and inherent characteristics of the wireless communication system can impact performance of the channel. These and other losses can create inter-symbol interference that might cause distortion and limit the data rate over the channel.
Various techniques have been developed to compensate for losses that affect signal transmission over a given medium. One approach to compensate for such losses includes distorting the signal, such as is commonly referred to as channel equalization. Channel equalization may be performed at a transmitter, at a receiver or at both the transmitter and receiver, such as by performing pre-emphasis or post-emphasis weighting. The equalization may be implemented in a non-adaptive manner where the channel is equalized and usually remains unmodified. The equalization may also be adaptive in which the equalization parameters are dynamically adjusted between a transmitter and a receiver (e.g., including during operation).